But Katy ISD chief admits exercise that upset 7th grader was bad idea

Katy super-intendent Alton Frailey, standing, and other school officials discuss a junior high student's complaint that an assignment was aimed at questioning the existence of God.

Photo: Gary Coronado, Staff

The seventh grader's head barely reached above the podium Monday night as she told Katy ISD school board members about a classroom exercise that she felt wrongly called her religious faith into doubt.

Two days later, during a Wednesday afternoon news conference held in the same meeting room, Superintendent Alton Frailey praised the student's courage but said a school investigation could not corroborate aspects of her description.

By that time, news of Jordan Wooley's four-minute, video-recorded testimony from the meeting had spread like wildfire across Facebook and other social media platforms.

"Today I was given an assignment in school that questioned my faith and told me that God was not real," she begins in the remarks.

On Monday afternoon, in a classroom at West Memorial Junior High School, a teacher had presented Jordan and her classmates with a task: to decide whether certain statements were fact, opinion or commonplace assertions, a category Wooley described as "myth."

"The fastest land dwelling creature is the Cheetah," read the first prompt on the worksheet used for the exercise, according to a screenshot provided by the district.

"There is a God," read the second.

As a Christian, Jordan found the second statement to be fact. But the teacher, also a Christian, said those who thought God's existence was fact or opinion were wrong, as Jordan recounted it.

"When I tried to argue, she told me to prove it," Jordan said, explaining that her attempt to cite the Bible was discounted.

Jordan described the effects of the exercise on her classmates. A friend who went home and began to cry. Another friend who was so aggravated she "wound up slamming everything off of her desk," Jordan said.

A third of her peers, who asked the teacher if the students could include what they believe on the assignment, and was told, "You can if you want to get the problem wrong... You'll fail the paper if you do," Jordan said.

The school's investigation, however, found that students were neither forced to deny God nor threatened with a lower or a failing grade if they did not, Frailey said Wednesday. He maintained that the assignment was neither graded nor used by any other teachers.

The investigation included interviews with 11 students, including Jordan, according to a news release sent late Wednesday. Another finding listed in the release said "the activity did not result in any arguments in the classroom."

Frailey declined to discuss any action that may have been taken against the teacher, but said she was at home of her own volition. This is the teacher's first year in the school district, he said.

Frailey said he would continue to place confidence in the district's teachers regarding the materials used in their classrooms but said the statement regarding God's reality should not have been included on the worksheet.

"No student in Katy ISD will have their faith denounced," he said.

The classroom exercise was "designed to encourage critical thinking skills and dialogue," according to a statement from the district, not to "question or challenge any student's religious beliefs."

"The teacher is distraught by this incident, as some commentary has gone as far as to vilify her without knowing her, her Christian faith, or the context of the classroom activity," continued the statement, which did not identify the instructor. "Still, this does not excuse the fact that this ungraded activity was ill-conceived and because of that, its intent had been misconstrued."

Jordan had reported the incident to her mother, who contacted the school and on the same day brought her daughter to testify to the board.

"I didn't feel like it was fair for my faith and my religion to have anything to do with what I'm learning about in school," Jordan told the school board.

"It's unfortunate because there's been a lot of piling on since the time this happened," he said. "And you have a teacher under that pile … a seventh-grade student under that pile, and a parent, a principal and school."

Emily Foxhall is the Texas Storyteller for the Houston Chronicle. She joined the Chronicle as a suburban reporter in 2015 after two years spent reporting for the Los Angeles Times and its community papers. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Texas Tribune and the New York Observer. She is a Yale graduate and Houston native.